Home Economics A La Shmoop

Does your mommy still do your laundry? Fess up. If she does, you have come to the right place! Shmoop is all for independence – can you hear the People sing? – Theme A: Do your own dirty laundry; it’s not what mom was put on Earth to do…

Schools used to teach Home Economics as a real course with a lot of seriousness. It was taken by almost 100% of high school girls in the 1950s so that they would make good wives and “homemakers.”

We’re not kidding. Yes, back in those days, women were expected to be in the kitchen, makin’ babies. Maybe not both at the same time.

Schools used to encourage women to learn early how to type so that they could get good jobs where, if they were lucky, they’d meet a man who might concede to marrying them.

Oh, America. Just 60 or so years ago. Ask your grandparents about it. Women were second class citizens if not worse. It’s amazing you didn’t have to leash them to a lamppost every time you needed to run into a store.

Because today we actually think of gender as an egalitarian state in the home, we are “teaching” Home Economics as that of a partnership, where managing a budget and keeping a nice home is a shared responsibility and something that you just have to know, whether or not you have a Y-chromosome.Some day you will have a job (hopefully), and whether you are a mommy or a daddy, unless you set up camp in a nudist colony, you will have to do laundry. Start now. Get good at it. Give your folks a break – while you’re at recess, they are likely having to kiss the boss’ booty to make a better life for you.

That’ll be you some day. Here’s to hoping your kids someday give you the same break.